So, I just told a musician friend I would not honor his request to play "Stairway To Heaven" at his sister's funeral. Chop. Chop. Did it in about fifteen seconds and with no extended explanation. Surprised at just how easy "no" rolled off my tongue. (I did approve "Amazing Grace. ")
I also recently agreed to play "Amazing Grace" at a funeral after politely refusing to play nearly every other piece the family requested, including "Holes in the Floor of Heaven"...
I find it, um, interesting how they characterize their #2 pick:
"The Wizard of Oz, this song is a message of hope and happiness"
Um, that would be a no. A classic case of paying more attention to melody rather than lyric.*
It's a melancholic song of alienation with just enough hope to avoid despair. Garland's rendering of it at her famous Carnegie Hall concert is truer to the drive of the lyric.**
* An example on the flip side of things would be Bergman's use of the Dies Irae in The Seventh Seal: while the text has its grim aspects, its use here is more driven by the melody, and the setting attenuates the actual hopeful message of the lyric:
** At the 3:00-3:40 mark (of course, the orchestral ending complicates matters, but Garland had a genius understanding of her audiences, and probably wanted the pleading to not be the final note, as it were): : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7XBU5NBUXQ
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